I essentially am. I've posted this elsewhere, but the idea, I think, is that the universe functions as a systemic whole, whereby one's actions bear an effect on the universe at large (or maybe just the objects within a given light-cone of space-time), 'reverberating' through it, and thus coming back to one's self, but in a wholly unpredictable way. In this way, "what goes around comes around". I find this case more plausible than some de facto system of 'moral accounting', whereby if one does bad things, bad things will happen to him or her.
ebola
"What goes around, comes around" is a Judeochristian interpretation of karma, one that is regularly applied by people in the west. Karma is not about what you deserve and God punishing you, it's simply about cause and effect. If I punch someone it will hurt them, and they may retaliate. It's not about them or me deserving it, it's about the fact of the matter. The raw translation of karma is "action". One action leads to another action. You may reap the consequences of an action that you had no part in. There is individual and collective karma.
Furthermore, it's not for humans to decide what is "good" and "bad". Again, that's Christianity, and human egos trying to weigh in on something that is way bigger than them. If someone does something "bad" to you, and you grow from it, was it "bad" in the first place? Was it your karma to receive such an action for your personal growth? There are people on this planet who commit sheer evil every day and they never pay for it. Hinduism describes this as universal law, which it has studied for thousands of years, and determined that karma is part of it. It's not a complete system, but it has some insight. Karma is simply one thing the universe does, like gravity, and humans are trapped in it.
The Buddhist understanding of karma does not reside in universal nature. It resides in our inner Buddha nature. We are born of pure consciousness, goodness if you will, and therefore any action which harms or causes another to suffer, our pure Buddha nature will take note of and want to remedy later. It remedies it by subconsciously entering or creating circumstances where the experiencer can reap the consequences of what they did in order to equalize. It's simply a ripening of prior circumstance. However, Buddhism takes the additional ontological step of saying this internal knowing transmits across lifetimes, and past karma will ripen.
The modern western view on karma I find interesting in some ways, especially under co-creation theory. It states that we come into life with a specific plan or karmic plan of action, and although we have free will, we do not have the freedom to escape the teachings we need. There is no tabulation of wrong or right, but simply a lesson plan.
The Hindu purist approach to karma is that people need to stop taking action. Every time you grasp for something, all you do is create more karma for yourself which later needs to be resolved. The Abrahamaic faiths instill the need for constant action in the root nature of our societies, while eastern faiths like Buddhism and Daoism say that no new action is necessary and in fact should be avoided.
In short, it's complicated.
